Should you buy the new Google Nexus 7?

The new Nexus 7 has been getting some rave reviews from the media since its launch on Wednesday, and with good reason.

However, if you’ve got your doubts about this new slate from Google, read on to know our verdict on it below!

The Screen

The Nexus 7 has the sharpest screen among all the 7 inch tablets out there, with a pixel density of a whopping 323 ppi. In fact, it may just have the sharpest tablet screen of all, period. It easily bests even the Retina displays churned out by Apple for the larger iPads, while the screen of the iPad Mini is abysmal, to say the least.

The Hardware

The new Nexus 7 tablet has a quad core 1.5 GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 Pro processor powering it, along with an Adreno 320 GPU and 2 GB of RAM. Coupled with the Fraunhofer virtual surround sound in the tablet, you’re never going to be left short of an immersive gaming or HD media viewing experience.

The Looks

The new Nexus 7 is a fair bit thinner and lighter than its predecessor, but it isn’t exactly a head-turner by any means. Its bezels are large and rather weird, but then again, it is one of the more portable 7 inch tablets out there, so there’s not much to complain about.

The Price

The Nexus 7 isn’t a sub-$200 tablet anymore, but even at the $229 that the basic 16 GB is priced at is a full $100 short of the price of buying yourself a new iPad Mini.

The Apps

This is where the new Nexus 7 tablet is going to miss out in a battle against the iPad and iPad Mini. Google Play has taken rapid strides forward in recent months, but the content available in it is still inferior to that available in the App Store for iOS, and that’s without taking into account the relatively miniscule number of tablet optimized apps available for Android.

Conclusion

At the risk of ending on a hyperbolic note, there are virtually no negatives in the new Nexus 7 itself. It has oodles of power, a power-efficient processor, it’s highly portable, it has an amazing screen, and it’s still a budget tablet at the end of the day. Apart from the shortcomings of Android and the Google Play Store, there aren’t any real reasons not to recommend this tablet.